In service areas or businesses, firms have an available pool of several skill-types. That is, there are resources (typically human resources) with different types of skills. Firms have the option of cross-training a chosen number of resources from any primary skill type into secondary skills, tertiary skills, and so on. They also have the option of further hiring and increasing the system availability of any chosen skill type. In addition, they also have the option of contracting out a required amount of any chosen skill type. Given an estimate of the time-indexed demand profile for each skill type, possibly aggregated over multiple projects, firms need to plan ahead in order to determine the extent of hiring, cross-training, and contracting, so that they are well positioned to meet the actual demand that will be realized.
Existing solutions do not consider the above sets of staffing options in totality. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a system and method that provides such workforce plans. It would also be desirable if the system and method took into account operational constraints like the minimum residence time that a resource-unit needs to spend in any skill-type upon being cross-trained and/or hired, minimum acceptable duration of any contracted skill set, inter-skill cross-training costs and lead time, and the uncertainties associated with the demand profile.